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Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

blog.aha.io

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Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#41

Post by AJ007 »

halisaurus wrote: post #21

I come from the other side of the glass. My toddlers have iPads and constantly tap ads that are usually larger than real, in-app actions. Often the ads are interstitial between two game screens, or float next to the content they are interested in. Besides being frustrating for the kids, I have to be vigilant on the content of the ads they're seeing. From my experience, the ads are not always appropriate for kids. I r…

This could be a reasonable class action lawsuit: both against advertisers collecting personal information from children (whether they intended to or not) and from platforms serving inappropriate ads to children.

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#42

Post by k1w1 »

oebs wrote: post #34
k1w1 wrote: post #28

Are there any SaaS apps that people recommend for managing online advertising? The Google ads UI is overly complex for a typical small company, and that obfuscates what it really going on with your ads. In addition I would love to see a UI that automatically handled experimentation and A/B testing with display ads (by automatically generating the ad images based on set of possible captions and background images).

Sure, there are plenty offerings, for example: Adobe AdLens, Adspert, Kenshoo, Marin Software, Wordstream.

Thanks for the suggestions. None of these are really what I had in mind - a tool that hides the complexities of campaign management and optimization. Where is the Zendesk of advertising?

I had a look at each of the websites. Wordstream is the only one that has any information on pricing. Adspert appears to be on target, but the pricing information just says "Adspert is affordable for every business". It looks like Adobe AdLens doesn't exist any more. A google search shows ads - but they just lead to a whitepaper signup.

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#43

Post by SyneRyder »

dperfect wrote: post #39
AJ007 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complaint originates from Google preventing advertisers from separating desktop & tablet bids. It is not that Google made ads available for mobile platforms but that they force you to purchase them. Kind of like if you want HBO.

Again, if you've set up your campaign to optimize for what you really want to see (not just clicks), then why would you even need to care about desktop vs tablets? There are more and more devices every day that blur the line between desktop and tablet, so it's really not that useful of a distinction to make. What about desktops with touchscreens? People are probably just as likely to click your ad by mistake there as…

You can't optimize your ads for conversions until you've already had a minimum number of conversions (I think 30 per month?). Google can still run up hundreds of dollars of paid clicks that will never result in conversions before then (and mobile apps for kids are one way to do that).

As for desktop vs tablet, some people might be advertising a tablet-only app or a desktop-only app. In that case it's best to advertise on the device people can use it on, to streamline the download/purchase.

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#44

Post by k1w1 »

akosner wrote: post #36
k1w1 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Aha! moment didn't come until I called Google and the support person pointed out that the placement screen wouldn't show data for today. Until that point we spent a few days scratching our heads wondering what could account for the weird traffic patterns. We have really detailed web analytics and the visitor patterns were just so unlike what we normally see. Especially the fact that the same visitor (almost alway…

What keywords did you use? Curious to see how unrelated games might have been related to your keywords.

Aha! is a tool for product managers to plan a roadmap, so keywords were related to "product management", "visual roadmap", etc. I am not sure how keywords match a game like Solitaire but my guess is that the game somehow contains a dictionary that they pass to google when ads are being chosen. Or perhaps the description of the game is keyword stuffed?

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#45

Post by jksmith »

DanBlake wrote: post #32

Facebook is worse. If you use FB promoted/boosted posts you can not untarget mobile/tablets, which especially sucks if your ads are for desktop centric products. Anyways- Is there a easy way on adwords to ONLY target desktop users? No tablets, no smartphones, no dumbphones.

Post goes through some detail on that.

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#46

Post by fblp »

k1w1 wrote: post #28

Are there any SaaS apps that people recommend for managing online advertising? The Google ads UI is overly complex for a typical small company, and that obfuscates what it really going on with your ads. In addition I would love to see a UI that automatically handled experimentation and A/B testing with display ads (by automatically generating the ad images based on set of possible captions and background images).

Adstage is another option

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#47

Post by Barraketh »

You are unhappy with the results because you're optimizing towards clicks. You should always optimize towards whatever is important to you. So if you would like people to click through to a specific page, define that to be a conversion and then optimize towards conversions. Optimizing to clicks is not great even if you exclude mobile devices - it's just not what you want.

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#48

Post by ariwilson »

k1w1 wrote: post #28

Are there any SaaS apps that people recommend for managing online advertising? The Google ads UI is overly complex for a typical small company, and that obfuscates what it really going on with your ads. In addition I would love to see a UI that automatically handled experimentation and A/B testing with display ads (by automatically generating the ad images based on set of possible captions and background images).

Google has a simpler version of AdWords called AdWords Express: http://www.google.com/adwords/express

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#49

Post by jaredmck »

k1w1 wrote: post #42
oebs wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, there are plenty offerings, for example: Adobe AdLens, Adspert, Kenshoo, Marin Software, Wordstream.

Thanks for the suggestions. None of these are really what I had in mind - a tool that hides the complexities of campaign management and optimization. Where is the Zendesk of advertising? I had a look at each of the websites. Wordstream is the only one that has any information on pricing. Adspert appears to be on target, but the pricing information just says "Adspert is affordable for every business". It looks like Ad…

Your adwords rep will hide the complexities if you like - be prepared to bleed money all over the place though - in many simple, complex and esoteric ways.

Most of those "no price listed" tools run somewhere between 5-15% of ad spend. Many times with high minimums. I see no reason to choose one from scratch.

Either learn adwords (really learn it, practice, test, do it right) or hire someone who knows what they're doing (and beware of all those who think they do but don't...)

Google is super optimized to get into your wallet so either play ball or stay the hell out of the path of the greatest money machine ever created as it rakes in cash all the way til it can't monopolize more.

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#50

Post by balls187 »

Barraketh wrote: post #47

You are unhappy with the results because you're optimizing towards clicks. You should always optimize towards whatever is important to you. So if you would like people to click through to a specific page, define that to be a conversion and then optimize towards conversions. Optimizing to clicks is not great even if you exclude mobile devices - it's just not what you want.

Do you have any resources that talk about how to optimize for conversions?
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